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Life Musing

I have whiplash from this year. It went by in a blink. Wasn’t I just meeting my daughter’s new third grade teachers at Back to School night? Didn’t I just sign up my son for his last year at his beloved preschool?

First day of school 2016.

Last day of school 2017

My son will be entering kindergarten in the fall and my daughter beginning fourth grade, both seem unbelievable. In September, both of my kids will be in full-time school, my days opening up like a blank book. Isn’t this the light at the end of my stay-at-home-motherhood-tunnel? And yet as the light bears down on me, I’m struck with nostalgia and grief.

Recently I came across a saying about parenthood that stopped me in my tracks.

The days are long, the years are short.

He entered the school as a two-year old. Now he’s barreling toward six.

Yes, oh yes. But would I want to travel back to those early, painful, excruciatingly days of new motherhood? Long on exhaustion and tears, short on sleep and freedom? Maybe.

***

The tiger lilies are back, as they always are every June. A welcome to summer and a bittersweet tug at my heart. They were my mother’s favorite flowers, or so I tell myself. She’s not alive for me to confirm this assumption. But I know she planted them along the railroad ties holding up the massive dirt hill our house was built upon. Every year they returned. Even after she stopped walking. Even after she and my father moved out. Even after her death. Even now, ten years later.

Ten years. Want to talk about whiplash? Try looking back on a decade after a death.

In ten years, I went from my early thirties to my early forties. I went from being a young married woman without children, to an older married woman with two. I went from being a devout but sporadic fiction writer to a devoted and slightly frantic memoir writer. I went from losing myself to finding something new.

Two days ago, on June 21, I went to visit my mother’s mausoleum by myself. It felt less like a depressing pilgrimage than a welcome, dare I say almost giddy, escape from my family. (No offense, family.) I packed a bag filled with old journals, new notebooks, notecards, my mother’s book, and my computer. My plan was to write a scene or two of my memoir in her presence. It would be my way of honoring her, and myself.

That morning my daughter made a collage for me to tape on the granite wall, and I printed out a picture of my kids at the pool, their arms wrapped around one another, grinning with the promise of summer, plus a class picture of each.

The year before I decided to take the kids for (almost) the first time (Emma had been once as a baby, and Leo in utero). We had a nice day with my father. Spending the bulk of our time at the park across the street, as my mother intended, and then stopping briefly by the cemetery to hang our tributes.

Exactly what my mother would have wanted.

This year my daughter did not want to go. The day before I gave her the option, no pressure. “It’s too sad,” she told me, looking a little sheepish.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “You don’t have to go.”

She understands now, the significance, and she has always felt more deeply than most kids her age. “I had a talk with Grandma Susan’s blanket,” she told me earlier that day, “I wish I could have known her. I wish she was alive to meet me.”

Oh, me too. Me too.

Ten years in a blink.

Time heals all wounds, so the saying goes. Well. Anyone suffering a loss knows that is complete bullshit.

Time does nothing of the sort. Like one of my mother’s favorite books suggests, time is a wrinkle. It may stretch out taut over the years, growing smoother, but then in an instant it can snap back together, meeting at the seams, scrunching into a messy ball.

There is no finish line to grief. It’s a forever orbit. We keep going round and round.

Like the seasons, like the school years. The tiger lilies come back every summer, and thank god. They are a reminder of my mother, of her love, of her endurance in my life, and in my children’s, despite having never met them.

We bought journals the day after, my daughter and I. We are summer journaling together, an idea borrowed from a writing friend. Every day we will write or draw a little bit.

“What are you going to write about,” she asked me this morning. “Will it be something sad?”

Oh, this kid. She knows me so well.

“I might write about visiting Grandma Susan, but that wasn’t all sad.”

She looked confused, so I explained how beautiful my drive home had been. Blindly following the directions on my fickle GPS, I went down roads I’d never seen before, passing stunning farmland, huge cows with stripes that looked painted on, and red barns that gleamed in the post-rain sun. I looked for a rainbow, but found tiger lilies instead, stopping on the side of the road to pick a handful.

We sat down to write and she marveled at my speed, and what she thought looked like pretty script, but to me it was the usual messy scrawl, my fingers unable to keep up with my brain.

“It’s so good,” she said, after I read aloud what I had written.

I shook my head, gently steering her in a different direction. “Journaling is always good. It can never be bad.”

So much is a contest to her already. She’s entered the age of acute self-consciousness, anxious about how she stacks up against her peers, against me.

But it doesn’t have to be that way for us. I think about how my mother always wanted her children to exceed her, surpass her. But the truth is, it doesn’t have to be an either or. We can all shine. Me and my mother, me and my daughter, me and my son.

We continue on, rolling forward, and back. Repeating old mistakes, and learning from others. The lilies will wilt and die, but there is comfort in knowing they will return.

Shortly after a late winter storm blanketed our region with snow, someone tipped off Mother Nature about the arrival of spring.

In a matter of days our backyard went from a smooth expanse of crystalline white, to big messy swaths of slush, to sopping pools of mud and flattened grass. The thick slabs of ice I thought would never disappear drained back into the earth.

The night before the seasonal shift, after an entire winter virus-free, my daughter succumbed to the stomach bug. Within days the virus spread throughout our family, picking us off one by one.

While my son slept feverishly, I stayed in his room, fighting off my own growing nausea. In the morning when I told my husband about how I literally willed myself not to throw up, a feat he unfortunately did not share, my daughter pointed out my hypocrisy.

“Mom, you always tell me it’s better to let it out.”

It’s true. I do say this. In fact, I just doled out this advice the day before when she was sick. She’s like me. We both fight it.

“You’re right, honey, but I needed to be okay to take care of your brother.”

But this wasn’t entirely true. I also needed to be okay because I hate getting sick. I’m terrified of surrendering to the will of my body, even if it knows best.

There was a moment in the night, at the peak of nausea, when I had to look away from my son’s lava lamp because the rising yellow bubbles made my stomach roil. I closed my eyes, breathing slowly, hyper aware of every internal rumbling, when a sentence popped into my mind.

We’re all just our bodies.

I felt a sudden nostalgia for all the nights I simply went to bed, without pain, without worry of being sick. Like many people, I take my health for granted until something goes wrong. We’ve all had this kind of realization. When we’re sick, or watching over a sick loved one, when we’re battling an illness, or facing a new diagnosis, we suddenly understand what’s at stake.

Without our bodies, we don’t exist. I suppose this is up for debate, but for me, that’s how it feels.

During my sick vigil with my son, his body was restless, and he moaned a little. I put an arm around him and my palm ended up against his chest. I could feel his heart beating quickly, every surge, every whoosh, almost as if there was no barrier between my hand and his most important organ. Under my hand was the sheer preciousness, and precariousness, of his life.

When my mother died, one of the strangest, and most painful things to come to term with was the fact that I no longer had access to her body. I couldn’t hug or sit beside her. One day her body was there, lying on a bed, struggling to breathe, and the next, gone. I didn’t just miss my mom. I missed her body. I had taken it for granted.

It’s been almost a full week since my daughter came home from a birthday party feeling nauseous and our family viral saga began. In that time, the snow has melted. While we’ve been recovering, winter has surrendered to spring. Uncurling its cold claw, making room for warmth, for new life.

The backyard is muddy, the trees remain bare, but there is new green grass sprouting, and one of the daffodil buds by our mailbox has a distinct yellow casing.

I point it out to my son, warning him not to open it. He touches it gently with his finger as we marvel at what’s wrapped tightly inside.

Recently my husband complained about the weather. “I’m done with winter,” he said, glancing out our kitchen window at the muted gray sky. All the snow had melted leaving behind the messier side of the season.

I agreed. Winter without snow looks, and feels, especially dreary. But I know the monotony of these cold spare months will eventually turn into spring, and the contrast between the two will be a gift.

I’ve always felt this way about seasons, about life. How we need the light and the dark, grief and joy, to feel fully alive. If we want to taste all the flavors, we must drink out of every cup, even the less appetizing ones.

Choosing the cup of discomfort, for example, instead of ignoring it. This has been on the periphery of my mind for years, but it rose swiftly to the surface after my country’s recent presidential election result.

What a wake up call that was, to many people I know, in particular, white people. Getting more particular, white women. Even more so: Myself.

Women of color, people of color, were not surprised. There was a scathing and funny Saturday Night Live sketch about this “phenomenon.” A group of white liberal city dwellers (in a neighborhood that looked suspiciously like my old one in Brooklyn) choked on their glasses of wine watching the election results while their two black friends rolled their eyes and howled in laughter at their ignorance.

It’s uncomfortable being called out as a rube, even more so as a perpetrator, but that’s what you are when you stand by and do nothing. When you’re even a little surprised by the widespread virulent and rampant racism that has been around for decades, centuries, that people of color live with every single day.

A writing friend wrote a short and fiery post entitled, MLK Isn’t A Holiday. “It is a call to action,” she said. But more often than not, for white people especially, it’s a day where many Instagram and Facebook feeds are rife with hopeful images and love filled quotes, mine included. Then, nothing. Until next year, Dr. King.

I squirmed in recognition. I have been that person. I am that person in some ways, but I’m changing. It’s a daily practice. It takes effort, and often, it’s uncomfortable.

This Saturday I’ll be attending the Women’s March on Washington. I signed up in November, a week after the election. Early on there were rumblings of discontent. About leadership, about the proposed name (The Million Woman March, which had been an African American women’s protest in Philadelphia in 1997).

Some white women couldn’t understand why there was a controversy at all. Why they were being asked to “check their privilege” and let women of color lead the way (literally and figuratively).

But the women who sowed the seeds of this march knew why. As momentum gathered, it was clear that after an election where 53% of white women voted for Trump, they alone could absolutely not lead this march.

I was relieved when minority activists took the helm and the march was renamed. The Women’s March on Washington is a respectful nod to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous March on Washington in 1963, and came with a blessing from his daughter, Bernice King.

Racism within feminism has been a sticking point for decades. Transferring the bulk of leadership to minority activists was a chance for this march, and feminism, to go broader and deeper than the core concepts of equal pay and reproductive freedom. Those rights are vital, of course, but they are not the only ones that matter.

This quote from a recent Vogue article explores the layers of meaning behind the march:

“Where past waves of feminism, led principally by white women, have focused predominantly on a few familiar concerns—equal pay, reproductive rights—this movement, led by a majority of women of color, aspires to be truly intersectional. So though the Women’s March has partnered with organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America—and though second-wave feminist icon Gloria Steinem is now an honorary co-chair [along with Harry Belafonte] —the march’s purview is far more sweeping. Women are not a monolith, solely defined by gender; we are diverse, we represent half of this country, and any social justice movement—for the rights of immigrants, Muslims, African-Americans, the LGBTQ community, for law enforcement accountability, for gun control, for environmental justice—should count as a “women’s issue.””

Women’s rights are human rights, to quote Hillary Clinton, and on Saturday, January 21st 2017, the day after the presidential inauguration, women and men are coming together to raise their voices and their fists in protest.

Can’t make it to Washington DC? Check out this incredible list of sister marches across the country – wait, let me amend this – across the globe.

“As women, we are told that to be the guest is to receive. We are told that to be the host is to give. But what if it is the reverse? What if it is the guest who gives to the host and it is the host who receives from the guest each time she sets her table to welcome and feed those she loves?”

When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams

For many reasons, 2016 had been a year of loss. But as December wound down to a close, I found myself haggling over a life with a higher power I normally don’t believe in.

Don’t take Ray, I pleaded, thinking of the little boy I’d known years ago. The one his mother, Lucie, called “My Special Little” because he came years after her first two children, and really, he was special.

The sweet boy who my parents doted on like a grandchild, who spent many afternoons of his baby and childhood in my parents’ house while Lucie cared for my mother.

Little Ray, we called him, even after he grew up. It was a fitting name, because he was such a beam of light.

I didn’t know how to pray, but I did it anyway.

That’s what you do when the outlook is grim, but you dare to hope. I dared to hope and every night before bed I’d imagine him as a young man, approaching my mother.

They’d embrace, he’d play her a song on his guitar, and then she’d send him back to earth, back to us.

***

The day after I visited him at the hospital, we drove upstate. I checked my phone constantly for news. Nothing. We arrived to so much snow my husband had to drag our luggage from the car on a toboggan. I felt anxious. Fear folded and unfolded in my heart, but I ignored it. I made dinner. We put the kids to bed. I prayed again.

Midmorning the next day, I checked my phone. A message appeared. I took one dragging deep breath and then dropped to my knees on the floor.

It was the day before New Year’s Eve and he was gone.

***

We are all novices in grief. Each time we experience a death, we begin again.

I mentioned this to a friend and she asked me to explain. The only way I can is through parenthood. It’s like having a second or third child. You think you will remember everything. You have the experience stored in your body, in your mind, but with the new child you marvel at every detail, at all you’ve forgotten.

Ray was eighteen years old when he died. I knew him mostly as a baby, as a little boy, and only in passing. I was living in Manhattan when he was born, in Brooklyn when he was growing up. I’d see him on occasion when I’d come home to visit. I’d hear about him from my mother often. She loved talking about Little Ray. He brought her joy, made her smile.

When she was dying he came to visit with his mother. I watched him run around the rooms of a house he knew well.

He was a breath of life for her. For all of us.

***

New Year’s came and went. It was 2017 and I realized I never picked a word for the year as I had in the past. A couple days before the funeral, on my drive to therapy, I went through a dozen words. Nope, nope, nope. Nothing worked. It was a raining and the sky was a leaden gray. The wipers squeaked across the windshield.

Life can turn on a dime, Lucie said at the hospital, and I knew this was true. I wanted my word to act like a sponge. I wanted to soak up my life. The good and the bad.

I knew the right word arrived when I felt my eyes prickle with tears as I sounded it out in my mind. Receive. Yes. That was it. I thought about the quote from the memoir I was rereading, When Women Were Birds.

“What if it is the guest who gives to the host and it is the host who receives from the guest?”

If I looked at my life that way, maybe I wouldn’t feel so drained by my children’s incessant needs. Instead of feeling emptied, I could be filled. It’s a choice, I realized. A flip-flop perspective. Receiving love while offering it.

But I knew it wasn’t just love I’d have to be willing to receive.

You don’t get one without that other, messier package: pain, sadness, death.

***

The funeral was terribly hard. In some ways, it hurt more than my mother’s. He was 18 to her 58. Maybe it’s because I had a cushion of shock for hers, or perhaps I shouldn’t compare it because pain can’t be quantified.

I struggled to remain composed during the service, but sobs bubbled up my throat the moment it began. The packed room was muffled with weeping and the occasional gasp of disbelief, all of us wondering the same thing: how had this happened? How could Ray be gone?

Several times I had to remind myself to stay present. I wanted to check out, buffer the pain, but I kept going back. I told myself to stay. To receive.

Listening to his friends speak about him, his girlfriend, his family, it was like meeting him, and losing him, all over again. As I covered my mouth with my fist, I watched the people who loved and knew him best stand up at the podium and honor him with words and music, through tears and laughter.

Many said they could feel his presence in the room. Grief and love washed over me in equal measure.

At one point, a woman silently offered me a pack of tissues. Thank you, I whispered, and she nodded. In that moment I loved her.

We were all connected in that room, every one of us, strangers, friends, family, because of Ray.

From behind the podium, Lucie implored us to hold onto the love and peace her son embodied. Love each other, she said, and we did.

I weep for our loss, and the world’s.

I love you Little Ray.
Thank you for shining your sweet light on my family.We will always hold you in our hearts.

“Today I voted in what I believe is the most important election in my lifetime.”

Still believe it. More than ever.

I’m about to take a social media hiatus right now for sanity’s sake, despite feeling tremendous gratitude to all my friends there – both the ones I know in real life, and those who live oceans away. It’s just too much for my senses right now. I need some quiet to think, reflect, and weep.

It’s funny, I never thought I’d love and treasure Facebook the way I do. There is so much freaking love and solidarity and compassion in my feed it’s unreal. Maybe in part because I came to the FB party super late, and most of the people are actual friends, or people I’d like to be friends with, and almost all of them share my views about things like, for example, politics and feminism. It sure makes easy reading, let me tell you.

My friends on FB got me through this election. They got me through those train wreck debates and all the ugliness that came before and after. I was on FB during the 3rd debate and I can’t tell you how much it helped. My husband and I were in the room together of course, but I also felt like I had dozens of friends whispering in my ear and passing me notes.

We’re in this together, you all said to me via funny jokes and serious commentary.

I felt so understood and cared for and seen. Just like I did last night and this morning.

Thank you.

Stepping away is not about that, but about taking care of myself during this grief.

Because I am totally grieving right now.

It started last night, around 11pm, when I shut down the internet and tried to fall asleep. I felt like someone had scraped all my insides out. My heart and chest felt hollow, empty.

The feeling was familiar because it’s exactly how I felt the morning after my mom died. When I shared this with my husband he agreed, saying that his emptiness feels similar to the global grief he felt after 9/11. The world is different. Or actually it isn’t. The world is the same, we’re just seeing it differently.

Regardless. My heart is broken. Having to tell my daughter this morning broke it all over again. Her hopeful face crumbled. I watched it crumble and then she cried. I had spent the previous hour practicing what I would say to her after reading an article online, but before I could open my mouth I started crying again.

I hugged her tightly. I said, “I know, me too.”

My daughter made this the other day.

We talked after our tears slowed, and we’ll talk more tonight. Really, our conversation is just beginning. My husband woke up soon after and found out the news from our faces. He was just as crushed.

All day I’ve been cycling through sadness, disbelief, and anger. I’m also crying, a lot. In the car I screamed so loudly my whole body went rigid. My heart keeps on breaking.

I told my husband that we cry now, and then we fight. I believe this. I’m not down for the count. But I am down. I don’t want to hear a thing about giving Trump a chance right now. I’m also not ready to put on my gloves and get into the ring, yet.

So, for now, I’m just going to grieve.

Sending love to everyone else in the trenches, or wherever you find yourself in the aftermath of this election.

P.S. Thank you to whoever took down the Trump signs near the intersection by my house. I literally was ready to pull over and rip them out myself (I just can’t bear to see them so close to home) but you beat me to it.

Today I voted in what I believe is the most important election of my lifetime.

I voted with butterflies in my stomach, but instead of the thick suffocating fear that has been weighing me down these past few months, I felt a lightness. I felt hopeful.

My husband and I waited in a long, but quickly moving line after dropping off the kids at school. Despite all my reading material, I didn’t crack open one book. We ended up standing behind some new friends from our daughter’s school. While chatting with them, a poll worker came over to write down our names. The friend spelled out his last name and then said something like, my wife’s is the same.

The older woman with the pen and paper asked, “Should I put wife as your name?” The husband looked aghast. “Oh, no, that would not go over well.” My husband agreed, saying, “Especially in this election,” and I quickly added, “Or any election.” We all laughed a little. I’m still unsure if the woman was being sincere or not. It’s hard to tell these days.

Some of my friends and family are probably (and others definitely) voting for Trump. We currently live in rural Pennsylvania, on the eastern border of the state, close to Philadelphia, but still. This is not the liberal Brooklyn where I lived for 13 years.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been wearing my feminist gold tank top as often as possible, including to the polls today.

I wore a cardigan sweater over it, because it was chilly this morning, but I deliberately left it open. I’m proud of who I am, who I’ve been since I was old enough to know the definition of the word, feminist. It has always baffled me when smart, strong, intelligent women deny this part of their identities. How can they, when the definition of equality is so simple and clear?

ES: I suppose the simplest definition would be believing that women are entitled to the same rights, opportunities and protections under the law as men. Equal pay for equal work, complete sovereignty over their bodies …

MLP: As opposed to being a sociopath? You can’t argue with those points.

ES: But people do. In this day and age, calling yourself feminist, whether you are a man or woman, has become a political statement.

Yes. Yes, it has. That’s why I wore my shirt today, and yesterday, and all the days earlier. After chatting with the woman in front of me, whose political affiliation I wasn’t sure of, I decided to take a chance and flash her my shirt. Her eyes lit up. I love it, she said.

Like Hillary, who is (hopefully) about to step into what was formerly a man’s domain. The Presidency of the United States. For years I felt a kind of ambivalence toward Hillary, no doubt in part because of the media’s negative spin and certain family members’ less than stellar opinions, but during this election cycle my ambivalence has transformed into deep admiration.

Her eloquence, strength, and poise in the face of misogyny and abject hatred is awe-inspiring. I honestly don’t know how any woman could watch that second town hall debate and not feel sickened or at least uneasy at the way Trump stalked her on that stage. He tried to intimidate her, shake her up, as men do when they hover and physically insert themselves into a woman’s personal space, but Hillary DID NOT FLINCH.

After I told my daughter a highly edited version about that night’s debate, she wondered if maybe Hillary didn’t see him. “Oh, she saw him alright,” I told her. “She knew he was there, but she didn’t let that stop her. She is tremendously strong,” I said, “and brave.”

And now, after weeks of mudslinging and false accusations, after what is already being called one of the ugliest and cutthroat of presidential races (from both sides), here we are. Election day. This is it. The end of the line.

At first the confidence of her title concerned me. I’ve remained on high alert throughout these past weeks, tempering my excitement with caution. The idea of assuming victory and then being wrong, was too devastating. I chose to remain pessimistically optimistic, if that makes any sense. Until I read her post. It wasn’t about confidence or assumption at all. It was about faith. A word I have a tricky history with, but have been coming around to in recent years.

Faith. A belief in goodness, a belief that no matter the outcome, everything will be alright.

The other day I told my husband that we have to prepare our daughter, who suffers from paralyzing anxiety, that Hillary may not win. We’ve been careful to edit and shield her from the ugliest moments of this campaign, but she knows enough to sense our concern and misgivings. She knows enough to feel afraid.

“We have to tell her everything will be okay no matter what.”

“You mean, lie to her?” my husband said.

“Yeah, kind of.” Because at the time I didn’t believe my words.

Honestly, I’m still not sure I do, but I’m going to have faith that everything will be okay.

My father said these words to me on Sunday, after I expressed disbelief that the next time we saw each other we’d have a new president. This is my father, who I love dearly, who I assumed would be voting for Trump since despite being a registered Democrat (from his younger days) usually votes Republican.

When my daughter asked him who he was voting for, I cringed, but then he shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, looking genuinely confused. “Maybe I’ll vote for myself.”

I laughed, with amusement and relief.

Then later when we hugged goodbye, he said these words to me: Everything is going to be okay, which I know he meant not only about the election, but life in general.

So, I decided to go for it. I’m choosing faith and love over fear and anger.

Either way, the fight for equality, freedom, love, and compassion is far from over. In some ways, it’s just beginning.

I’m most concerned now about what might happen after the election. I’m worried about possible violence, civil unrest, hate crimes, retaliation. Whoever is the next president has a shit ton of work to do when it comes to knitting back together the currently divided and divisive country.

And yet, as a wise relative recently said, there is a reason we are called the United States of America. I just hope we can live up to our name and find our way back to one another peacefully.

First, I’d like to thank everyone who read my last post about assault, left a comment, or sent me a note. I appreciate every act of kindness, compassion, and support.

It was scary to push “publish” in a way it never has been before, but once I did I felt a rush of relief. The second I let go of that post, I knew I did the right thing, no matter the response. Sometimes you don’t realize the weight you’re carrying until you release it.

I’ve read many stories about women being triggered by America’s presidential election. Some were on personal blogs, others in major news outlets. A few were written by my friends. Several people reached out to me and said, me too.

Reading about friends’ and strangers’ accounts of assault was both comforting and horrifying. But I believe there is power in our stories being out in the world. In sharing them. In breaking the silence.

It’s my deepest hope that if one good thing comes out of this election (and by that I mean, in addition to having a woman president) it is that the conversation about sexual assault, discrimination, and misogyny is at the forefront of the national (and international) conversation.

Thanks to Donald Trump, the term, “locker room talk,” will never be the same. Let’s hope we can also retire the adage, “boys will be boys.” Both expressions give a pass on reprehensible behavior. The kind I don’t want my son to be a part of, nor his sister to be a recipient of.

I decided that I wanted to compile all the articles I’ve been reading about sexual assault and the triggering of this election season. You’ll notice, the posts are not only from Americans, but from women abroad. This election is global in importance. If you don’t believe me, check out J.K. Rowling’s Twitter account.

What is the point of creating a list like this? My first hope is that it may help women feel less alone and isolated in their experience with assault, and also acknowledge that so many of us (men included) have been feeling a lingering disgust and unease by the news emerging about Trump’s past.

Bonus points if this list sways anyone on the fence during this perilous election season.

Finally, if you know of an article or post about this topic that I missed, please leave a comment and I’ll continue to update it.